Buried Beneath
by Writer Awakened
Summary: The roots of Elibe lie buried beneath the roosts of dragons and the steel of skyscrapers, and only ink can untie their ever-coiled knots. In the most historic place in all Lycia, two professors and historiographers try to unearth their world's family tree. Modern-day-ish semi-AU.


_Buried Beneath_

- O -

(Author's note: Initially written for an FE 'AU' prompt, I've rewritten and enhanced this a bit since it was originally written. Consider this my little love letter to FE7. And also probably the most 'meta' thing I've ever posted here. It was also a hell of a lot of fun to write, so enjoy!)

- O -

"Professor Lazlam? I brought those files you were asking for."

The professor looked up from his desk. 'Clean desk, clean mind', was ostensibly his motto; like his mind, however, his desk lay awash in sundry objects scattered haphazardly, papers and ballpoint pens and manila folders cast about, the remains of the day's turkey sandwich stuffed in his right hand.

The young man at the door looked from the professor to his workspace, and gave the professor a look of amusement or maybe befuddlement—it was hard to tell.

"Oh, Mark. Thanks." Professor Lazlam took the files graciously—disinterestedly—and almost immediately returned to his work, eyes darting from the hypnotic light of his computer's flat monitor to the dull yellowed parchment sitting curled beside it. The files were for a different class, a different endeavor altogether, one decidedly less interesting and less personal than the one currently monopolizing his attentions.

"No problem, professor," the young man said. If he had ever wondered why the professor chose to work with the blinds drawn, door closed, and lights off, he didn't ask. Not knowing any better, Mark might have taken Professor Lazlam for an old man, so obsessed with antiquity, his live auburn hair streaked very prematurely with bolts of grey, dark hazel eyes often sunken and rung with dark circles. But there were people to do and things to drink, so Mark gladly left the professor to his work, knowing full well he was able enough not to keel over from a few term papers.

Historiography, to some extent, had always been Arvid Lazlam's calling. Teaching, to all extents, _hadn't_, although it wasn't terrible that it turned out that way. If he hadn't, he would never have found both the desire and the means to unearth and untangle his family tree. His mother had told her a long time ago a woman with the surname Pherae had married a man named Lazlam, and that somewhere within him, from sometime far past, coursed the blood of the great Heroes Roy and his lord father Eliwood, and before them the valorous hero Roland.

Ever since his childhood, those stories of gallantry and heroism had entertained Arvid, capturing his live imagination and sending images of swords and shields through his mind, pictures of princesses and oaths sworn kneeling at the foot of thrones and kings and crowns. His mother had been quite a storyteller, recanting the tales of Eliwood's triumph at the Dragon's Gate or Roy's bravery at reclaiming the Tower of Light with as much joy as Arvid felt listening to her. Eliwood and Roy and all their kin were kin to her, if distant, and telling their stories was her matrilineal birthright. One day she'd told all the stories she had to tell, and one day he'd become too old for bedtime stories, and one day he woke and realized she no longer lived and his father was beyond the age of remembering.

_I can't let those old stories die, _he'd thought. Those legends were his birthright, too, even if he did imagine they'd been embellished through the years. Arvid's desire to delve deeper and find the truth was what drove him to become an academia nut, and if even one of his students left his lecture with some fraction of his passion for history, he'd go home satisfied.

There was no way Eliwood could have been as pure-hearted and righteous as the stories said. Blessed by Elimine or not, he was just a man: especially if he had been as dashing as the surviving frescoes and oil portraits made him out to be. He'd have been in the pants of—or rather, beneath the silks and cotton chemises of—hundreds of women! His son Roy, in particular, could rival even the most diligent of nightclub crawlers!

...or, that's what people said, anyway, in history classes and on message boards. Arvid had the lingering suspicion (hope, really) that the truth was a bit more nuanced than common sentiments dictated. The knights of the time were less than shining arbiters of justice and virtue, yes, the lords and ladies not as immaculate and gallant, nor the villains _quite_ as irredeemable as the stories, over time, made them to be.

The evidence, anyway, was strong that seven hundred years had not fundamentally changed the fact that people were still people. Legends were sanitized, yes, and the Lycians, Etrurians, and the other victorious parties were of course ever-diligent in writing history to show themselves in the best light. Still, what evidence still remained after seven centuries of rapid and often tumultuous change said that the people of the time viewed their conflicts as considerably more black-and-white than did the people of the now. Prinny the Elder, Mark the Mysterious, and all of Seer Bramimond's enigmatic scribes (clouded by their own biases though they were) painted a very clear portrait of a few very specific topics and times, most of them during war.

There were so many gaps in the legends, however, and each small contradictory bit of information posed another pressing question about how and why the world changed so dramatically. There were so many things that even recent history did not know about Elibe's time of kings and crowns. Why were there so many people back then with talent for magic, when it seemed nowadays finding a talented magus was as rare as getting struck by lightning? If the dragons were as long-lived and hard to kill or fell by illness as the historians had wrote, why was there neither hide nor hair of the Dark Priestess Idunn, or of any of the myriad divine dragons? Were those stories exaggerations as well? Oh, the dragons existed—of that there was no doubt except in the minds of the complete loonies—but why did it seem like the minutiae related so clearly in all the legends still remained so nebulous to modern study?

The recent Medieval Revival in the popular consciousness (no doubt inspired by the book and surprise hit show _Playing at Crowns_ about dark, _dark_ life in the Dark Ages) might have influenced Lycia on a superficial level, but it did nothing for historiography save for the sudden influx of people who _thought_ they knew what they were talking about.

"What really happened?" Arvid leaned back in his ragged old office chair—it squeaked as if to protest in its age—and sighed, drawing his fingers firmly across his forehead and his closed eyes. "Hm. If there were someone to tell us. Seven hundred years...maybe if the Archsage had lived a thousand more years...or if the divine dragons were still here to share their revelations..."

Arvid was snapped from his sentimental reverie by the sound of his cell phone playing familiar fanfare.

"Hello?"

A woman's familiar voice answered. "Arvid! Hi! It's been a while, hasn't it?"

Arvid sat up, quickly rigid. "Oh, Professor Winds! Ah—yes, yeah, it has been a while. Last time was the symposium at UThria, if I recall."

"You recall correctly," she replied, and he knew enough to know she was smiling on the other end of the line. "Also, _how_ long have we known each other, _Professor_?" she added with no short supply of amusement. "Really, come on. 'Lynne' is fine!"

"Right. Of course! Sorry, I just didn't expect to hear from you out of the blue. Need to get my thoughts together, y'know. So what's going on?"

"Heh, well, I'll get right to it. My department and the archeology department are sponsoring a dig near the ruins of Castle Ostia. The chair thinks they've found evidence of the invasion of the keep during the Secret War. I was planning to drive out there this weekend. Don't suppose you'd like to join me?"

"Join you?" In truth, she'd had him at 'sponsoring a dig', but he had to play it cool. "This weekend_ is_ kinda short notice. It's Thursday night..."

"Alright then," Lynne replied. "Just figured I'd offer. Well, talk to you la—"

"Wait!"

She stifled a laugh on the other side of the line. "Yeees?"

"No, I'll—uh, I'll go with you," Arvid said, fiddling with the papers on his desk. His computer had gone to screensaver: two dragons, one black and one white, intertwined, awakening from their long slumbers.

"Are you sure? You don't have any night classes this weekend?"

"Let's see, er... I think I might have—" he paused for a very brief moment, blinked, then said (emphatically, as it were), "No. Nope, no classes this weekend." Professor Arvid shook his mouse and quickly opened up a few email windows as Lynne shot him a few of the details. Quite a shame, Mr. University President, that he had to fall suddenly terribly ill that weekend.

- O -

Professor Lynne Kulah Winds was perhaps the ablest of Sacaen historians Arvid knew personally, no doubt a product of her intense pride in her own culture; not to be outdone, their conversations usually consisted of friendly ribbing about whose ancient cultural heroes both famous and infamous might have emerged victorious in single combat. Eliwood (named the True after his death) was a stalwart—had he ever lost a battle?—Arvid would argue, always in vain, against the exploits of the Silver Wolf and his thunderous kin.

But what Lynne might have lacked in the quality of her idols, however, she more than made up for. She might have been headstrong, maybe even vain, but she'd every reason to be. Youngest professor of history one of the most prestigious universities in Lycia, she was smart enough to know she could not know everything and stubborn enough to let her thirst for knowledge drive her sometimes into overwork.

She was a great many positive things, and she was also his good friend. They had met what seemed to Arvid like eons ago, when they both paid their dues at the University of Thria and then by some minor miracle, their grad work at the University of Laus under the watch of the big-nosed chair of the history department. That big-nosed chair became Arvid's boss when he began his youthful professorship, a gregarious and gentle man very different from his similarly-named Lausan ancestor.

Arvid had known Lynne Winds long enough to take most of her great and sometimes terrible qualities for granted, but there was one he was reminded of whenever he saw her. She was, as her many, many male admirers could attest, strikingly beautiful, and in that she was very much like her legendary namesake. Sacaens were not often known for their blue hair, but hers was darker than the sea and tied in a traditional ponytail. Her eyes were the same green people expected her hair to be, mossy as a still stone and bright whenever she smiled. And her legs, of course, were simply the best.

That Saturday afternoon they drove west with the morning sun and the afternoon wind at their backs, down the highway that moved serpentine through the city states of Lycia. It was a great day for a drive, and Professor Lynne loved nothing more than to put down the top of her sleek red baby, let her brown skin shine in the sun (smiling at everyone) and loose her hair to the wind, gripping the stick a little tighter. Beside her, Arvid reclined, looking up at the near-cloudless blue sky through rose-colored glasses. _Sunglasses_, of course: their color a remnant of his pupating sense of humor in his highly-cynical college years. Lynne never missed an opportunity to tease him on just how silly he looked in them. Not even then, nearly fifteen years after the fact No matter, they blocked the sun. Besides, he'd always say facetiously, it was because he was a _rebel_. In hindsight, maybe he had been prescient. In his own way he was about as singular as they came among his peers in his field.

"I have to tell you the truth," Lynne said. "This is less an 'archaeological dig' than a 'hey, how about a few of us go up to Castle Ostia and explore a little bit dig'. The chair of the department really doesn't see much value in visiting historical sites. He's a historical mercenary."

"That's too bad." Arvid looked over to Lynne to find her eyes focused on the road, brow clenched as though engaged in solemn thought.

The skyscrapers of Thria and the sprawling cityscape of Kathelet gave way to forest and farmland as the speed limit rose as high as it went in Lycia. Next to Road 169 in Bern, there was no better place to drive a red car and go really, really fast. You could drive a red car fast basically anywhere. But to drive a red car fast _in style_ took hard work and dedication to the craft. Neither here nor there, but the Bernese were always well known for their crafts.

It was about an hour and a half from Thria to Ostia, and Arvid took the time spent speeding through the only country he'd called home to wonder about the dig site. Most of the Lycian capital was a cityscape now, with Ostia proper the largest city east of Etruria, but most of the land around the ruins of the great Castle Ostia was still underdeveloped, either farmland or small suburban towns nestled not-so-close-together in a ring of reverence all encircling the legendary keep. It just might have been the intense national pride for the "Great Fortress" that stood tall through two major wars and many minor conflicts with Etruria which kept the creeping tide of modernization away; more likely (in a world where 75% were un-Abel to tell Hector apart from Cain) it was its location, short miles from the Etrurian border and far away from cash-paying Lycian civilization, that kept it undeveloped.

Arvid Lazlam thanked the Saint for that. The idea that anyone would consider tearing the castle down to build cube farms, storefronts, or anything including the word "strip" made him weep for society. Let everyone else worry about cells of fringe lunatics and 'cleansing' in Sacae and arms proliferation in Bern! _His_ priorities, at least, were in order. Yep.

"You probably know better than I do," Lynne said after a long time of peaceful silence. They'd stopped twice, once for iced coffee at the nearest Doughnuts For Dippin' and once to check the tires after a vicious bump, but it had been at least 45 minutes of smooth sailing in beautiful weather. Lynne Winds turned to her fellow professor, hand still on the stick as she downshifted, sun beaming off her smile. "But how exactly _did_ Hector of Ostia die?"

Arvid took a moment to straighten his dress shirt. When he spoke he shouted over the roaring of the wind. "No one really knows! From what few written accounts there are, he died about the time of the Great Bernese Insurrection. But no one has ever found where he was buried—in fact, we don't even really know how he died, although if Nineneyson's _War's Bloody Delights _is any indication, he died in battle. And if the poets knew anything, it was history."

"Yeah, the legend is he died at the gates of Castle Ostia defending the keep from Zephiel the Dragonhearted, right? With his trusty 'Axe of Lightning' by his side?"

Arvid had to chuckle. " 'The Dragonhearted'. What a _fascinating_ sobriquet. Because 'Zephiel the Warmongering Son of a Bitch' just doesn't have the same ring to it." He looked to the side as Lynne turned off the freeway. The car chunked inelegantly as they decelerated and the road turned to garbage. One might be tempted to think there was nothing of value off that particular exit if not for the small brown sign beside the street, with "Scenic Attraction: Castle Ostia 5m" printed in barely-visible forest-green.

"Well, if there are any thoroughly desiccated corpses of broad-bearded axe-bearers lying around Castle Ostia, I hope we _don't_ find them," remarked Lynne.

"I don't think you have to worry. There's no way in all the world that Hector died in Castle Ostia. If he had, he would have been buried in the royal cemetery. Knowing him, he probably died somewhere in Bern fighting off a myriad of wyverns. And of course once he was dead the Bernese would have treated him with only the fondest courtesy..."

"The brave hero of Ostia...wyvern food."

"Hey," Arvid said, his expression stern in mock warning. "Watch yourself, miss."

Lynne shrugged. "It's a better end than puking yourself to death, anyway."

The two professors shared a glance. On the horizon, the great Castle Ostia began to slide into view, in its picturesque position atop a hill past a sea of green—trees and grass alike.

Arvid only nodded. "Fair enough."

- O -

True to Lynne's word, the gathering was less an "archeological dig" than "a bunch of history people exploring a really old place for fun." Truth be told, Arvid preferred it that way, mostly because digging seemed rather pedestrian and he'd just starched his shirt, dammit! A few of the staff members from the symposium at UThria were there, to whom Arvid re-introduced himself. Professors Arvid and Lynne explored together, walking the hallways, and Arvid saw for the first time in person the halls of the place he had only seen in pictures and "interactive tours."

The almost-childlike glee must have shown, because they had not gone very far before Lynne said, "Is this is your first time inside Castle Ostia?"

Arvid nodded.

"I'm surprised. I would have thought in your travels _far and wide_ you would have at least come here _once_ before, right?"

"I've been to Castle Pherae three times, and I could probably walk some of the old brigand ruins in Thria blindfold. I've just...never had an occasion to come to Ostia. Today I just have a really good one." He turned to Lynne and smiled serenely. Their eyes met for about a second, and she turned away.

"I came here once before. Our department really likes to send people places whenever they have even the slightest reason. Good thing I like to travel, huh?"

"Now how does a 'Professor of Sacaen History and Cultural Studies' get off visiting _Castle damn Ostia_?" Arvid was more amused than anything. For her part, Lynne could only shrug sheeplessly.

"Right place, right time, I guess."

"Sounds like you, alright," he said sarcastically.

"Welll...you've heard the stories about Hector, right? How he might have married a Sacaen girl?"

Arvid shook his head. "Wasn't that only a rumor spread by Zephiel to try to sway some of the more prejudiced Lycians to rebel against him?"

"That's what we think, right? Well, you'd know about that than I would. Anyway, all I know is that mysteriously no one knows the name of Hector's wife, or what might have happened to her. It's interesting; traditionally the wives and husbands of ruling Lycian lords were influential, or at the very least well-admired. Vivian, mother of Roy Dragonborn, the 'Young Lion,' for one. But nothing about Lord Hector's bride. Isn't that curious?"

"Mmm...yes, I guess that's always seemed a little strange. Figured the information had just been lost. What're you saying?"

"He might have married Lyn of the Kutolah!" Lynne flipped her blue hair. "I might just be a descendant of Hector of Ostia myself! ...maybe."

Arvid laughed. "Who knows? There's so much we don't know. We're going to find it all out someday. Just too bad we can't ask Bramimond right now. His second sight might come in handy, hm?"

"Heh. Bramimond himself? Or one of the 'Seers of Bramimond'?"

Arvid simply rolled his eyes. "Honestly," he said, "if any one of those lunatics had ever _actually_ seen or heard the voice of Bramimond, I'll give up my professorship."

"Well, maybe if they hadn't formed almost six hundred years _after_ the last known appearance of Bramimond..."

"They should have said that they owned the Afa's Drop," Arvid said, and snorted. "Then maybe more people would've joined their little cult."

"If they had they would have sold it. A group like that? No way they would've hung onto that. Apparently it sold for two and half billion a few months back."

"A tiny gem like that? That true?"

Lynne nodded.

Arvid and scratched his stubbled chin.

"So. What about in Sacae? Have you been any place interesting there?"

The two professors turned a corner and found themselves at a spiraling staircase. At the top was what appeared to be a small opening from which boiling oil could be poured onto the poor souls who wished to assault the castle's second floor.

"I've been to Bulgar a lot," Lynne answered, "and a few of the Jute ruins. See, the problem with coming from a nomadic peoples is that there's not always a lot of stuff left behind in any one place for us to find. Which isn't to say there isn't interesting stuff to find out on the plains. You just have to look a little bit harder. Dig a little bit deeper. Fifty years ago people didn't know Lyn of the Kutolah once belonged to a different tribe, the Lorca. There were a lot of smaller tribes around before the Silver Wolf united most of them. All that is very modern scholarship."

"But there's still so much we don't know about the Sacaens, isn't there?"

"Ehh." Lynne poked a bit at her phone. "I wouldn't say that. We don't know everything, sure, but I could probably piece together how people lived, say, 1000 PS. It helps that the furthest reaches in the east are almost uninhabited. Out where the Jutes used to roam? Might as well be dragons living in the green mountains as far as we're all concerned. Basically a backwater.

"It's just...just a lawless place now. It wasn't always like that, though! Well, I'll spare you my unsolicited thoughts on the sort of brigandage that goes on out there. I will say this though: archaeologists have found piles of bones out there. _Human_ bones. And the Jutes used to use charred human bones for their Druids' prophesying rituals, but some of the bones they've found are more recent. 50, 100 years old; can you imagine this sort of mass killing has been going on for a hundred years? Maybe longer? You know they used to call Sacae the 'Crimson Plain'? More of the Magyars, the Tatars, found dead every day, and the rest of the Sacaens pretend they don't know. The Bulgars, the Kutolah, they don't care. They just don't. I mean, I feel bad. I can't just up and leave and go back there; there's really nothing I can do. But, you know, sometimes I feel like I should."

"And Bern's funneling arms to 'em," Arvid said, matter-of-factly.

"I just—" Lynne shook her head. "It pisses me off, if you want to know the truth. I know I've lived in Thria basically my whole life, but the plains are still my home. Cognitive dissonance between the place I knew and the place I see every day on the news. Sometimes I feel so detached but—it does, it pisses me off."

"I don't blame you," Arvid said softly. He tried to think of something, anything he could say, but the right words never came to him. She felt the way about her country the way many Lycians felt about the League, the way Etrurians felt about their kingdom and Ilians about their republic. In a world where miracles and magic were very real, one's identity was inextricably bound to that of their country and to their country's founding hero. When Arvid looked into Lynne's eyes, he saw the same pain he'd have felt in her shoes, seeing fellow Sacaens die and others turn to violence.

"I got off track. Anyway, let's keep going, hm?" She pressed her lips shut. Her green eyes had turned stormy.

Arvid nodded. An awkward silence passed between them, and as they walked, their footfalls echoing off the deserted stone pathways, Arvid could only think back to when they were both fellow students, and he really didn't want to be a teacher but it seemed the only place his passion for antiquity could take him, and she was as lost as he was, probably more. She used to come to his dorm with a bottle of Bulgar wine and some cheap Magyar scotch from some little liquor store wherever, and they'd drink together and make stupid jokes and play board games like little kids, and when she'd happily amble back to her room drunk at the end of the night, he'd always sigh, head spinning from the wine and think about her and wonder what the purpose of life was and what he really wanted from it.

Sometimes Arvid had the feeling he didn't really care about Eliwood or Roy or Hector or Roland the Valorous and Hartmut the Brave. No one else seemed to, so why should he? Of course there were departments in every school everywhere dedicated to the study of things he adored and legitimately found fascinating, but it was always hard to find kinship with someone who was at least as passionate as he was. Deep in his heart though, he did realize: he wanted to keep those stories alive, the stories of heroism and courage and sometimes unfathomable evil, the kind that always seemed to sadly stay relatable. They were real. They lived in a world where it wasn't a selfish luxury or a fleeting fantasy to believe in heroes, true heroes, and heroism, true heroism. He didn't find many who felt like he did. Only her. They were friends but never lovers. She was too caught up in herself and he was too caught up in everyone but himself.

_Would it have worked? _Arvid ran his hand across his brow. The sound of their footsteps seemed to travel across time. _I don't know. I don't know._

They stopped inside a small room, filled with many dusty pieces furniture well in the process of decaying, most of which seemed to be from long after Hector and Eliwood's time, yet still old enough to have accumulated centuries of cobwebs, seemingly undisturbed.

"Huh," Arvid said, looking around. The only light came from a small window high on the wall. He squinted and looked around. "Is it just me or does it look like no one's been in here for quite a long time?"

"Yeah," Lynne said distractedly. She stole a glance at Arvid, a strange expression on her face, then turned up towards the window, barred with a clouded pane of glass. "Seems it."

Professor Lazlam walked towards the back of the room, searching for anything interesting that might have gone unnoticed by researchers past. As he walked, his shoes kicked up puffs of thick dust, and by the time he'd reached the far wall he had started coughing violently. He looked around for anything interesting, any artifact that might be of some sort of historical significance.

Failing that, he leaned up against the wall, exhausted, a bit disappointed, a bit depressed—and was surprised when it gave. Only slightly, but it _gave_.

"Lynne. Come here for a sec."

Lynne came over, and Arvid pressed up against the wall with both hands. "This wall. It's not a wall."

"Looks like a wall to me."

"No, I mean, it _is_ a wall, but it's giving way a little bit. Come on, help me push it!"

Indeed, with her help, the wall gave way more, and slowly, it began to turn. The two professors pushed until there was an opening enough to squeeze through. The secret passage opened into a decent-sized, completely circular room, with a high ceiling ending in a dome at the top. At the very apex of the dome was a small glowstone—the kind often found on ceilings deep within Lycian caves—that shed a dim green light down on the room, like the glow in the most ambient room in a museum. Arvid pulled a flashlight from his jacket pocket to better view the walls, and what the two professors saw amazed them.

In the center of the room sat a single wooden table and two chairs, bare but for a heavily rusted sconce lying on its side and an empty brass goblet, its deep color marred by verdigris. Of interest, though: the walls. In sharp contrast to the rough, bare walls of the rest of Castle Ostia, the walls of the circular room were perfectly smooth. And painted. The walls were covered with a colorful, bright fresco that spanned their entirety, from the very ground up to the dome ceiling, upon which Saint Elimine, golden halo around her head, reached a pale hand out towards the Eliminean God. This room probably had been a hidden pantry of some sort in the time of its subjects but over the course of years had been vacated and made into a history in color of Lycia's glorious past, painted in painstaking detail with recognizable figures and scenes from across Lycia, framed by a sea of green grass and the blue sky above.

Speechless, Arvid placed a free hand against the wall and shined light against what he was seeing. There was Roy, red hair burning bright, star-spangled armor and Sword of Seals held high. There was Hector, blue beard bright and bold, Armads held high in his right hand, flask of beer in his left. Arvid inspected further and Lynne followed at his heel as he traced his hand around the room, walking in a great circle and then retracing his steps. All the major figures from the Secret War and the Great Bernese Insurrection were present: Zephiel with his two dragons, red and purple, shadowing him, Eliwood with Ninian the ice dragon at his side, and the great fire dragon in the shadow of the Dragon's Gate.

"This is..." Arvid laughed, shaking his head in disbelief that something this magnificent was right in front of him. He was almost giddy. No, he was giddy. He was a schoolboy and this was the candy store. "This is _fucking_ _incredible_."

"See, this is why the chair didn't put up too much of a damn fuss about all this," said Lynne, herself in awe. "They wanted to slash funding to the whole department, honestly. But I told them, I said 'Don't do it. If we don't keep looking, someone else is going to find that big something before we do.' And what do you know?" Lynne put her hands on her hips and looked up, as satisfied as Arvid had ever seen her. "Yeah, slash funding, okay."

"_How did we not know this was here?_"

"Probably the secret passageway," Lynne deadpanned.

"Yes, but, how did no one know about this? Or _write_ about this?"

"_Secret_," she replied, as if to close the matter.

"_Well_, Miss Anna and her 'VIP' store were ostensibly secrets, right? But every historian worth his—or her—salt who wrote of the wars at the time somehow mentioned her and her 'secret shop'."

Lynne giggled. "'Miss Anna's' is the name of a, er, 'gentleman's club' near my old apartment in Laus."

"She would be proud, I'm sure."

"Either way, this is an incredible find," Lynne said, using the backlight of her phone as a makeshift flashlight. She ran her hand very gently along the surface of the wall, tracing careful fingers against the crackling blue sky and the crude but recognizable figures beneath. "This can't be from the Scouring Millennial era, can it? This seems much more recent."

"The room might be," Arvid murmured. If it was truly gauche to keep his jaw gaping half-open, he didn't care. "The furniture is too modern and in too good condition to be from more than a few hundred years ago, but these walls..." He gingerly touched the wall again, flashlight's glow trained on one area of the fresco as he examined the wall the way a surgeon might his patient. "This has to be at least five hundred years old. These colors are too faded and the surface too smooth for it to be any more modern than that."

Lynne laughed. Realizing how woefully awkward he must have looked, crouched down, ears and eyes to the wall, Arvid hurried to compose himself lest he make more a fool out of himself. By the time he'd cleared his throat and stifled his big stupid smile, she had already returned to examining the wall opposite, a scene of the open plain of Sacae facing down an army of Bern. After a few moments of searching Lynne found her namesake, standing tall near the horse archers Rath and Rath's daughter and young ward, Sue and Shin, respectively.

Meanwhile, Arvid shone a light on one particularly interesting section of the fresco.

"Is this...a picture of women throwing their panties at Roy?"

Arvid tilted his head to the side and regarded the portrait peculiarly. Lynne came to join him.

"By God," he said. "It is."

"Yep," Lynne said, nodding her head matter-of-factly. "He was a real pimp, _dontchaknow_? That's all people ever talk about with him."

"Seems it. An even more incredible find," Arvid said, chuckling. He barely contained himself from jumping into the air.

"And who's the redhead by that small tree looking over at him?"

They answered in unison, and then laughed "_Anna_!"

"This is truly something. Maybe Roy truly _was_ the ladies' man people made him out to be."

"Or maybe the people of four hundred years ago had the same idea then that we do now. When you have a hot teacher like Lady Cecelia of Etruria giving you private lessons, people's minds start to wander. Of course."

"_Hot teacher_ indeed..."

Lynne smirked. "Didn't realize she was your type."

"Not what I meant, but anyway..."

For a while longer they looked over the fresco and when they were done they met at the center of the room.

"So...should we tell anyone else about this?" Lynne asked.

"What? Of course we should! This is a historic discovery. I was leaning against a wall, for God's sake! How did we find this by me _leaning against a wall_?"

"Strange. I never thought I'd ever be in a position like this." She pulled up the chair and sat, her phone hanging limp at her side, casting its light on the bare floor. Her seat creaked until its old age's burden. but held strong. "I used to feel like I was always the one on the outside, just studying while everyone else made all the great discoveries to share with the world. But now that I'm here—I don't know. I don't know what to feel. Is this really—did no one ever think to examine this room before?"

Arvid pulled up the other chair and sat beside her. He opened his mouth to speak and nothing came out.

"Sometimes it all seems so insignificant," Lynne murmured. She blinked quickly.

For his part, Arvid bit at his lip, heart hammering away in his chest.

"Maybe," he admitted after a moment. "That's what people say, anyway. You don't _really_ believe that, do you?"

"Of course not!" Lynne said, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. "But we say so often how important the past is that we start to believe it, and then you realize that in the end, maybe it doesn't actually matter. Yeah, history is doomed to repeat itself. Not insignificant at all..."

"I'm sorry, Lynne," Arvid said quietly. The small chamber was quiet, and the dim light from the ceiling above cast on the walls to form a surreal scene, a sort of time capsule from a different age.

"—sort of...easy to get buried in the past," Arvid mumbled, standing with his hands in his pockets, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

"Huh?" Lynne said, blinking vigorously again.

"I mean, we're historians. Our jobs are to analyze the past, to teach the past, to demystify it. Or, I don't know, that's what I always thought it was. But, you're right, it means nothing without the present. And—when my mother used to tell me stories about our family tree...well, I mean, I remember the stories. They used to hold me in thrall, really. How much more interesting their lives were than mine, and what if I could be so influential, in some small way."

Arvid shook his head. "Selfish? I dunno. Maybe? Yes? Looking back, I remember those stories more than I remember my mother. I was too busy working, and studying, and going out on weekends...when I lost her...well, I knew I wanted to keep those stories alive. And my father—he was almost too old to remember my name, let alone those old tales. But now, I'd trade all of it to see them one more time. I don't think I ever really thanked them? I can thank them all I want now, but they won't be able to hear me. And, you know, my children...I don't think I could ever tell them the same stories the same way...it just wouldn't be the same. So, I understand. I really do."

By now, Lynne was openly weeping. Arvid stood beside her and put a hand on her shoulder; she reached one hand up to rustle his hair—like she used to do when they were friends together in school—somewhat absent-mindedly, somewhat affectionately. He blinked his own tears out of his eyes and sighed.

After a while—how long, Arvid couldn't say, Lynne spoke. "That makes a lot of sense," she said.

"Hm?"

"Yeah, that's why I went into teaching. Because words do have so much power." In a flash, she sprung to her feet and stretched, long arms high over her head then high out behind her.

Arvid smiled. "We should probably go back. We could get this published in the Collaborative Journal of Historiography."

"There are probably fifty scholarly journals salivating to get a piece of this scoop," said Lynne, as they returned together to the great hall of Castle Ostia, weathered and worn but not missing its majesty. In the shadow of its many pillars, Lynne reached down and gently squeezed Arvid's hand. "And to think we found it today..."


End file.
